On Monday, Donald Trump, flanked by Robert F Kennedy Jr and the former talkshow host and head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr Mehmet Oz, announced that women should avoid paracetamol (known as acetaminophen or by the brand name Tylenol in the US) throughout pregnancy because of a spurious link with childhood autism.
This political theatre highlights a longstanding and harmful problem: pregnant women, and their babies, are routinely let down by partial, poor-quality and missing medical evidence. Pregnant women deserve better than irresponsible headlines raising fear based on shaky research that has failed to convince the scientific community.
